Brazil gears up for 2012 ArtRio

September 4, 2012

The art industry is legitimate in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, due to the recent boom in its economy over the past decade. As a result, artists and collectors across the globe are gearing up for the second annual ArtRio, which will start off this September 13, according to The Associated Press.

Art collecting has long been thought of as a popular pastime among the very wealthy Brazilians, but now it is bringing about a number of middle class enthusiasts, making this event quite the affair.

"There's been a paradigm shift. Art has become an object of desire here," Katia Mindlin Leite-Barbosa, president of Sotheby's Brazil, told the news source. "It's becoming something of a marker of status, like a nice car or a fancy vacation. It used to be that you couldn’t even find listings for gallery exhibitions in the paper. Now there’s a whole weekly section devoted to it. The interest is palpable."

The four-day event will feature more than 100 collections and galleries from all over the world, and it will be packed into the 80,730 square feet warehouse in Guanabara Bay, the Huffington Post reports.

"It used to be that we Brazilians were just worrying about inflation, security, making ends meet. But the country has changed so much and so quickly that now people have the luxury of focusing on other things, including art," artist Brenda Valansi told the media outlet. "With ArtRio, we're trying to debunk this notion that art is just for a few and show that you don’t have to be a millionaire to be a collector."